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Wednesday, April 19, 2017

On the Eve of Escalation: The Metrics of Yemen's Destruction

US Moves Toward Major Intervention in Yemen

The USA, according to Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis, he who ordered the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah, Iraq, is about to take a major step towards direct intervention in support of the Saudi Arabia war on the Yemeni people.

According to Jeffrey St. Clair of CounterPunch, this war has already seen 90,000 Saudi airstrikes on Yemen, or one every 12 minutes, 123 a day for two years now. With direct US military involvement it will only get worse. The USA had been limiting its involvement to fueling, arming and target selection for the Saudi military.

The UN and international media claim only 12,000 or so deaths in Yemen but this just doesn’t add up. If there's been 90,000 airstrikes that means only one Yemeni is killed for every 8 strikes? They must take us for idiots, or more likely, just too ignorant and brainwashed to know better.

One airstrike is a big deal, for it involves the use of several thousand kilograms of high explosives, enough to incinerate an entire village. And then there are the cluster bombs in their thousands, and the hundreds of markets bombed…so if only 3 Yemenis have been killed per air strike then we are talking upwards of 250,000 dead Yemenis and counting.

Doesn’t this match the toll for the first two years of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and isn’t just going to get worse with US involvement? There is a huge crime being committed in Yemen and the UN and its cronies in the so called “human rights movement” are helping cover it up with their ridiculous death statistics.

Never mind the tens of thousands of Yemeni children already dead and buried from the US backed Saudi enforced starvation blockade of food and medicine to the Houthi homeland.

The US has to protect its national interests in controlling the Bab Al Mandab chokepoint between the Red Sea and Indian Ocean through which passes the trade of the two biggest international partners, Europe and Asia.

The US may have become a second tier trading partner but militarily “Mad Dog” Mattis is not going to sit by and lose control of the region. The US has a airbase in near by Djibouti and most likely planning permanent bases in Yemen to aid the incoming onslaught of US military might.

Already moves are underway to increase direct US military involvement in Somalia, the other key link in controlling the “Gate of Tears”. First comes Mad Dog Mattis calling for an increase in airstrikes, then on the ground coordinators, “training officers” and in the end, direct military intervention by the US, as Somalia itself continues to be rocked by insurgency and famine. What possible good can come from an aerial onslaught on the Somali people by the American Luftwaffe, whose so called “smart bombs” seem to inevitably find targets containing Somali women and children.

Famine to the left of Bad Al Mandab, famine to the right of Bad Al Mandab, it seems a famine policy is being enacted by Pax Americana and its lackeys at the UN when it comes to the Horn of Africa.

So expect no mercy when it comes to the US military directly involving itself in Yemen. Drone strikes will continue, with some most likely based directly in Yemen, though does Pax Americana really want to give ISIS and Al Qaeda an available target by putting American boots on the ground in Yemen?

And always off shore lurks the the US Navy’s Indian Ocean Fleet supported by its base at Diego Garcia, striking without warning anywhere they choose in Yemen, never mind the dead women and children by now in the hundreds of thousands.

Many tens of thousands of new airstrikes, so many that the munition makers in the US are putting on 24 hour shifts. The US airbase at Camp Lemonierre in Djibouti will be ramping up operations and the US will be taking out of mothballs their bases in Saudi Arabia.

It is as if the War on Iraq is being fought all over again, except this time against the poorest, hungriest of the Arab peoples, the Yemenis.

Saudi Arabia is stuck in a quagmire in Yemen, easy to get into and very difficult to get out of, just as Egypt did in the 1960’s, what President Nasser was to call “Egypt's Vietnam”. The US recognizes the fact that the Saudi war is going nowhere, with out a single major objective recaptured since the start of the war. Al Qaeda and ISIS are growing in strength, taking advantage of the vacuum of power existing in the Sunni communities in Southern Yemen who are actually fighting for independence.

The so called “Government” of Yemen, if you can call a government based in a foreign country any such thing, is little more that a mouthpiece, with no effective fighting forces on the ground in southern Yemen thanks to the Saudis failing to provide the salaries of its fighters. No pay, no way, their families have to eat so its back to doing whatever it takes to buy food for their wives and kids and that was the end of “Governments” army.

So its South American mercenaries guarding the UAE facilities, Saudi troops and a handful of Sudanese troops caught between the battle hardened Houthi fighters and their allies in the Yemeni army loyal to former President Saleh and Al Qaeda and ISIS with all hell to pay.

What is the US going to do, sit back and watch their strategic partner in West Asia, or asset really, the Saudi’s, stuck in a swamp of their own making with no apparent way out?

The USA seems intent on going where history has proven only catastrophe awaits, into the tribal conflict in Yemen. As a result the world should expect half a million or more dead Yemenis in this war against the Houthi tribes and their supporters as well as untold starvation deaths of Yemeni children.

But no matter the unimaginable suffering the Yemen people suffer, their tribal differences must be put aside, as in reunification in 1990, and lift themselves out of the failed state they exist in today. There are those who do not want this to happen, for crisis management is the policy of the USA when it comes to the Horn of Africa, as in help create a crisis the better to manage control of such an international critical choke point, the Bab Al Mandab. As in Somalia, the USA prefers chaos to a strong, independent Yemen able to interfere in Pax Americana’s control of the Gate of Tears.

Thomas C. Mountain attended Punahou School for six years some half a dozen years before “Barry O’Bombers” time there. He has been living and writing from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at g_ mail_ dot _com